


With A Trace Of Hope

by softly_speaking_valkyrie



Series: Love Across the Stars [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Erotica, F/F, Fingering, First Time, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Lesbians, Love Confessions, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn, Porn with Feelings, Post Order 66, Post Victory and Death, Romance, Smut, True Love, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:48:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24222313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softly_speaking_valkyrie/pseuds/softly_speaking_valkyrie
Summary: After returning to Coruscant with Rex, and leaving without him aboard the Silver Angel with Trace and Rafa, Ahsoka finds herself adrift in a galaxy gripped in a dark chaos that has destroyed the Jedi Order and left her on the run for the rest of her life. Alone and with no resources, her only source of comfort or hope is a sleeping Trace Martez inches from her own cot. Her walls break down, and Ahsoka can feel the emptiness the death of the Jedi has left within her - at her darkest hour, Trace Martez becomes her only hope; a hope of safety, security and of love...
Relationships: Trace Martez/Ahsoka Tano
Series: Love Across the Stars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756282
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	With A Trace Of Hope

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to my Victory and Death follow up, 'Defeat in Victory'. Ahsoka returns to Coruscant with a broken Rex, and while the former clone commander finds what has been left of the 501st, Ahsoka, Trace and Rafa listen to the broadcast of Palaptine's address to the Senate on what is now Empire Day. Ahsoka and Trace are both 18 in this fic as per canon.

The _Silver Angel_ drifted through Hyperspace at a stellar yet lazy pace, slower than the _Venator_ -class heavy cruisers Ahsoka was used to.

The Togruta had been trained and practically brought up aboard warships at the side of her incredible mentor, now she was not only alone but mundanely civilian, a passenger aboard a _Nebula_ -class freighter and not a war asset and a Jedi apprentice. No wonder she couldn’t sleep, as she tossed and turned in her hammock, next to the body of Trace Martez.

Rafa would be at the controls, able to slip the ship in and out of Hyperspace when needed and when passing through the space lanes into the Outer Rim. If anyone searched the ship, Ahsoka would hide under the floor plating compartments and hopefully wouldn’t be found, but that wasn’t what was keeping her awake; neither was it the turmoil gripping the galaxy as the Republic moulded itself and morphed into what had been dubbed the ‘First Galactic Empire’. Ahsoka recoiled in the rock of the hammock as she thought about it, the static-shrouded cackle of Palpatine’s voice in the broadcast declaring it through the usage of his emergency powers. She mused to herself, content in the background sound of Trace soothingly and gently snoring in her sleep. Even after months of travelling with Lady Bo-Katan, Ahsoka had returned to her close friend to find not many compartments of her pride and joy had been renovated into living spaces. This meant that (much to Ahsoka’s pleasure) they had to share the room while Rafa took watch in the cockpit.

Lady Bo-Katan’s words came to Ahsoka as she shuffled among the netting, looking up at the bulkhead ceiling. ‘You should watch yourself and that girl, if you’re going to protect her in what is to come,’ the disembodied voice of Bo-Katan spoke softly and yet stoically into the recesses of Ahsoka’s mind. And she would be right if she was there; Ahsoka looked over the gap between hammocks and observed Trace sleeping soundly.

From the cockpit, Ahsoka could sense Rafa’s anxiety. It was bleeding through the corridors of the _Silver Angel_ like an odd odour. Ahsoka found it sound, especially when Rafa had been up close to the wireless when Palpatine had delivered his monologue and plan to the totally compliant Senate. Even from Ahsoka’s point in the workshop, Rafa had heard the whole thing from when the wireless had cut in, she’d heard the sheer volume and the multitude of applause from all the Senators. Had Padmé added to the thunderous applause?

That thought stabbed her heart, opening the floodgates for all the others. Was she still a Senator? Had Palpatine taken a shine to her in particular and was he making moves to do something to her? Where was Anakin? Was Master Luminara still alive? Was Master _Plo_? The worse thoughts and questions began to creep into her mind as wetness leaked from her glassy blue eyes. Ahsoka turned over in her hammock and tried to cover her face with now trembling orange fingers – her swirling dark thoughts threatened to take over as she thought to Master Obi-Wan and all the others. Surely Master Yoda would survive...

“Ahsoka?”

It was Trace, rubbing her eyes and pulling at her short frontal afro with lazy fingers, pulling the clump of it apart. She was far more frizzy than ever before but waking up all at once as soon as she saw that Ahsoka’s eyes were full of tears. “Hey... Hey, it’s okay...” She immediately began to dote. Ahsoka tried to talk, lurching up with a spurt of acrobatic fidelity in the hammock. Trace had crawled from hers and was gliding across the floor in a flash that Ahsoka couldn’t keep up with – she as clambering into Ahsoka’s hammock in an instant and was wrapping her sweet and tender arms around her. Trace was almost barren, wearing the tank top undershirt of her usual drifter outfit with short shorts to cover the rest of her, around her neck, was a talisman necklace of an origin Ahsoka felt as if she recognised but could not think then. Her hair in such a frizzy state was not only adorable but gracefully beautiful in a way Ahsoka had only seen in one other woman in her life – Barriss Offee. Trace’s eyes were glowing like a feline in the dark-light as she looked at Ahsoka, holding her shoulders and then eventually soothingly caressing her trembling cheeks. She held Ahsoka steadfast in the solitude of the room, wiping the traces of tears from her white and orange face. She adored Ahsoka’s flesh tones, the distinct Togruta patterns of white upon blood-orange that faintly glimmered even in the no light. She thought her companion looked like a work of alien art, so beautiful in the darkness and the light.

“Oh Trace... They’re all gone... The Jedi Knights have been destroyed,” Ahsoka sobbed, fresh tears coming to replace the dead ones Trace had tried to rid her skin of.

Ahsoka bowed over, her face burying in the crook of Trace’s shoulder and neck, snaking her arms around the mechanic and pilot with all strength and need the Togruta now had. Her wandering mind had betrayed her, and now emotions were spilling from her like an engine leak in the middle of deep space. Ahsoka felt adrift among the stars, and now Trace was the only piece of debris she could cling to for some semblance of stability. Trace embraced her back with a furious might that told Ahsoka she was not only not alone, but among such a guiding and bathing light, that Trace would not leave her here and now, she’d stay up with her forever if she had to. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m right here,” Trace whispered to her companion laced between gentle whimpers and clutching sobs. Ahsoka recoiled in her counterpart’s embrace, burying her face deeper into the crest of Trace’s gentle bosom.

“Hold me, Trace... Just once... Hold me...” Ahsoka begged of her, feeling the feedback from Trace’s touch the moment after her request had been received. She’d clutched Barriss this close only a couple of times in the past, the first ricocheted in the back of her mind, in a frozen cockpit as a teenager. Now Trace was holding her like a woman. “Hold me... for the first time, Trace...”

“Ahsoka... It’s okay... you’re safe here, with me,” Trace whispered further, her hands curling around the slender curves of the Togruta’s shoulders as her arms crossed around her back. They held each other tighter still, constricting each other in suffocating but blissful love. “No one is gonna hurt you here, Ahsoka... you’re okay,” Trace kept reassuring her, only for the frightened Togruta to tremble a little more in her arms.

The walls she’d erected within the crashing Venator hours ago were now totally obliterated and all the feeling of loss and absence of the Jedi lingered within Ahsoka Tano like a menacing handicap. It crippled her in Trace’s arms as each blow dealt with her echoed back on a torturous feedback loop.

“You’re right here with me, and I am never going to let you go, Ahsoka...” Trace reminded her, snaking her tender and naked arms around the Togruta all the more, trying to overwhelm her in consoling love. She bowed the crest of her head down and onto Ahsoka’s naked shoulder, letting the softness of her loose and frizzy front afro to cushion both of their bodies. It made Ahsoka jerk, sniffling harshly as if something distinct had washed over her all at once; it was Trace, piercing through her cloud of misery and reaching through flames to pull her out, so much so that Trace was crying now too.

“You don’t have to be alone right now, Ahsoka... You’re _not_ alone, as horrible as it can feel... I know what you’re going through; me and Rafa know how it feels to lose everyone... But we’re here,” Trace pleaded to her, her voice growing quieter and more personal when Ahsoka finally lifted up her head and looked into Trace’s mellow whiskey eyes. Her tan flesh blended somewhat into the dimness of the blackened room but the centres of her pupils glowed like the brightest of stars. Time fell motionless between the pair as Ahsoka stopped crying for a mere moment and the pain of the systemic removal of her order, her family, dulled in the background of her mind.

She reached for the perky softness of Trace’s tight cheekbones and held them possessively almost as if trying to prove Trace was really real and before her. She was there, she was real, Ahsoka’s body jerked again as her breath hitched and she almost fell back within herself.

“Trace...” she whispered, her voice barely more than an audible breath as she pressed her torso closer to Trace’s. She could feel the warmth coming from the tanned body of the seasoned mechanic; even more when Trace’s arms slid down the slender rope of Ahsoka’s spine down to the small of her back.

“I love you, Ahsoka... I _love_ you...”Trace reminded her, emphasising herself and making sure Ahsoka knew her body was there.

Ahsoka knew her body was there, she could feel Trace’s chest pressed closely to her own, warm and tender flesh gracing her own as tan and orange blended in the dark of the shared compartment. Reaching out with the Force, throwing away all the lessons of chaste and considerate restrained the Jedi had taught her all her life, she truly began to let her senses touch and trickle over every shape and curve and centimetre of Trace’s semi-nude body in the solitude of the room. The door remained sealed and the only thing to detract from their closeness was the hum of the Hyperdrive reverberating on every bulkhead, every bolt and every buckle throughout the whole of the _Silver Angel_. With her senses on full alert and accented like the neon lights of Coruscant’s seedier underbelly where Trace and Rafa had lived, Ahsoka reached out even further, into Trace’s head and stopped.

“Will you... let me try something, Trace?” The loose and now floaty Togruta asked in a hushed and tripped out tone. Trace crested her down and planted a lucid kiss on Ahsoka’s exposed collarbone, just above the crook of bone under layers of bright orange flesh.

“I want to be closer, Ahsoka...” Trace practically begged of her, reaching for Ahsoka’s limp hand from her own shoulder and kissing her fingertips gently, sensually – she could see the bleeding colours in Ahsoka’s eyes, the melding of her senses as she felt all of Trace with the Force.

She was unsure if this had been attempted before, if anyone had tried to channel their senses with the Force this acutely, to simply _feel_ her partner, as much of her as Ahsoka could as Trace’s hands began to wander around her. She closed her eyes, knowing every outline of her lover close to her and where each limb, even every atom was in relation to her own space. When Trace’s hand hovered over Ahsoka’s shoulder once more, the Togruta felt it like bathing water soaking her skin; Trace slipped her gentle fingers under the fabric of Ahsoka’s vest top and let the strap fall down the length of her upper arm. Ahsoka winced melodically as Trace’s lips and teeth came to her neck and began to nibble. Ahsoka’s eyes dried and she moaned into the vacant air as Trace held her closer, pulling Ahsoka into her wanting embrace by the small of her back with locked arms. “Oh, Trace,” Ahsoka moaned further, Trace’s lips planting soft and sweet kisses all the way up her neck and gently to her jawline. Ahsoka, through the Force, felt the sweet and sparkly sensations of all of them the whole while. It was enough to make her sweat when Trace’s fingers trickled to the hem of her shirt.

The sight ahead of the tanned mechanic was immaculate – Ahsoka’s bare tummy and chest, orange flesh stark in the black, bright and gorgeous with the amazing patterns of symmetrical white dotted in diamonds and jagged shapes etched down the sleek of Ahsoka’s body like art. They were art, _she_ was art; Trace’s lips magnetised to her lover’s body. Not her breasts, now nude and open to the hit air between them, but to her stomach, nibbling at the sweet and tender flesh of Ahsoka’s navel. Ahsoka’s body reacted accordingly, jolting as if she had been given a fright – Trace’s hands pawed at the sides of Ahsoka’s midriff, holding her like freighter controls but infinitely gentler as Ahsoka craned herself over back and gave Trace access to the full scope of her body. Her head-tail swept the softness of the hammock’s netting as Trace’s hands graced the tips of her montrals.

“Ah!” Ahsoka almost screamed as the jerk of sensitivity shot up the lengths of her head tails and made her body shake itself to the core. Her legs tightened and clutched together to guard her core.

Trace immediately ceased all her touching and sat up. “I’m sorry!” She cried, seeing the twitch of incredible sensitivity on Ahsoka’s now scrunched face.

The Togruta panted, but smiled graciously; Trace hadn’t know what she had unleashed by touching Ahsoka there, but now the former Jedi was smiling and even giggling as she smoothed and stroked down the length of her montrals. She held Trace’s cheeks, again softly and planted a wholehearted and loving kiss on her soft and plump lips. The memories of their escapades against the Pikes running the spice came back to the forefront of Ahsoka’s memory and superseded the chaos that had gripped her before. She was safe with Trace, she was loved with Trace. The maroon red of Trace’s lips became smeared, caught up on Ahsoka’s lips as she kissed her again, caught up on the first and gazing both lazily yet lustily into the Human’s eyes. She stroked the shorter cut sides of Trace’s crown and traced the lines of her jaw, holding her chin and kissing her again in lavish and felt pecks.

“Take your shirt off...” Ahsoka told her in a baby of a whisper. Suddenly her confidence had returned in full and as her breath caught on the cusp of Trace’s lips, the mechanic felt compelled to follow through with any order the former Commander gave her.

Ahsoka suddenly commanded her temptation, and her fingers roped around the buckle of Trace’s shorts, pulling with a firm want that silently told her they were to come off as she shed her tank top, and Trace was still helpless to comply. Ahsoka guided her body down, almost falling in her as the sway of the hammock rocked them gently with the hum of the Hyperdrive lulling them into a deeper sense of intimacy. Still, Ahsoka could feel every inch of her lover, her body coming alive with energy as it fed into Ahsoka’s core. She parted Trace’s legs and slipped her shorts off without much or any effort at all, while Trace tossed her top over the edge, joining the half-naked and beautiful Togruta in nudity. And then Ahsoka fell onto her properly, wrapping their bodies up in a constriction of limbs and loving, wandering fingers.

Their kisses grew far more rapid in pace, teeth biting down onto sodden and wet lips with puffs of breath emanating as hot steam from both Trace and Ahsoka. Blue eyes glimmered in the no-light looking at mellow whiskey pupils. The atoms in the air popped with an uplifting ecstasy and electricity that it lit up Ahsoka’s orange skin like a cruiser on fire. Pillars of juxtaposed freshness came lower on Trace’s nude body as she felt the tender softness of scaled head tails drape across her naked chest. She tried to hold her arms close to her bosom, as if to cover herself up in front of Ahsoka when she moved away, laying beside her.

“What’s wrong?” Ahsoka asked, their lips close enough to kiss again. “You’re gorgeous, Trace... You don’t need to hide from me...”

“Have you ever... been with a girl before?” Trace whispered back, her own skin growing cold in the opened compartment, but so warm next to Ahsoka’s.

“Jedi aren’t allowed to love... Or be physical with anyone we want; but I was never good without attachment... I got attached once,” she confessed, tracing down the side of Trace’s exposed body, remembering Barriss and how many times she wished or actually held the Mirialan during their time together. She had buried her love for Barriss a long time ago, and now it flourished and bloomed anew for Trace Martez. “I’ve been with someone... once, and she was very special to me,” Ahsoka told her love, watching as Trace almost recoiled away from her. She caught Trace’s cheek and pulled her back. “But you mean more to me, Trace,” Ahsoka defiantly reminded her, before consuming her lips in a powerful kiss.

Trace was almost swallowed whole by Ahsoka’s emotions, feeling her loving touch embrace even the corners of her mind. Her pupils gently slid back, almost into the interior of her skull as her hands wandered over Ahsoka’s chest, holding her close as the Togruta warmed her again. When they broke, Trace was devoid of breath, lightly panting and pulling at Ahsoka’s own night shorts. ‘Off’ she wanted to say, snaking her legs around Ahsoka’s and keeping her right where she was.

Ahsoka’s hand deviated and slithered down; as one removed the last of her own clothing, the other snuck between Trace’s legs, and suddenly they could feel everything else melt away between each other.

Trace felt tight, tighter than Ahsoka had expected but she cried out in ecstasy as she felt Ahsoka penetrate her, filling her up with tender digits. Her arms cascaded away from covering her chest, and almost squirming and wincing as if in glorious pain but the most primal of pleasure, she moaned a high-pitched need and swung her arms powerfully around Ahsoka’s neck. She graced the Togruta’s head-tail with her hands and forgot both who she and Ahsoka were for a moment. She gripped the head-tail firmly and pulled, forcing Ahsoka to arch her neck backwards and scream out in beautiful relief as her body clenched. She felt Trace’s sex tighten around her fingers, both of them howling together before diving back for another kiss as soon as the tanned mechanic let go. Their voices, trapped in each other’ throats as tongue slipped together like their bodies were, echoed ecstatic cries of the deepest elation.

They were silent running, alone in space and floating as Ahsoka’s fingers trickled under Trace’s lower lips, excavating her most erogenous zones and finding the beading spot to make her cry out the most. The hammock felt like a river current, lazy and gentle, letting them flow down the stream of opened space in a small canoe that had become the full and beautiful _Silver Angel_. Ahsoka leaned up, softly laying her puckered and plump lips on Trace’s forehead while her fingers continued to stroke her hidden cove, coaxing luscious gasps and cries of disbelief.

“Ahsoka...” Trace breathed, her legs closing and curling around her lover’s hand, the silk-smooth texture of her thighs surrounding Ahsoka’s touch. The former Jedi could feel every hair on Trace’s body coming alive as the shockwaves of the pleasure she was bestowing on the woman’s sex encircled her neatly.

“I’m here, Trace,” Ahsoka whispered to her love again, her free hand coming around the back of her neck and holding her so strongly. Ahsoka exhumed strength now, she was a pillar of it as she gently kneaded her hand into Trace’s opening; with her fingers inside beautifully coaxing wetness from deep within, and her thumb gently stroked sensual circles around her lover’s pearl, begging it come from her darker-skinned hood. “I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere.”

Once again Trace gently caressed the tips of Ahsoka’s montrals and stroked them, blasting her Force-sensitive confidante with such incredible sensation, that Ahsoka almost buckled in the hammock. Her hands trembled around Trace’s body, and the fingers within her accidentally grew more erratic. Trace leaned up, holding herself up against the netting of their canopy and kissed Ahsoka sweetly, all she could as one poured into the other. Down below, the mechanic’s hips bucked and rocked with fervour into Ahsoka’s patient yet wanting hand. Trace’s fingers gripped her lover’s wrist hard and held it there, kissing her all the more as Ahsoka continued to stroke the walls of her lover’s interior. She was practically melting into Trace’s touch, and Trace helpless against Ahsoka’s hold on her. It was only moments before she felt a clench within her, and her legs tightened all the more around Ahsoka’s hand.

“Stars!” Trace screamed.

Ahsoka’s lips darted forward.

Trace blew her fuse into Ahsoka’s kiss as her body ignited with climax all around her lover’s hand. Ahsoka squirmed into her kiss as well, feeling a slight relief come from her own lower parts at the touch of her montrals any further. She couldn’t control herself now, reaching out with the Force and sensing all the wash of emotion and pleasure trace as enduring. It was like a supernova, an exploding Hyperdrive leaving only devastation in its path. The hammock rocked and buckled as Trace threw herself onto Ahsoka. She constricted the Togruta around in her limbs as her sex grew numb from the sensation. Her skeleton shivered, her spin turning to jelly on Ahsoka, as if a spinal tap had taken her out of commission, and Trace exploded into a burst of incredible closeness as she rode out the aftershocks like solar flares. It was a feeling she’d not felt for a long time.

Ahsoka let her down as gently as she could, and the pair coiled up together like snakes, wrapping the other in only the warmth of their bodies.

“Where do we go from here?” Ahsoka felt the sudden need to ask as she looked away from Trace’s beautiful and naked form.

A hand came to cup her cheek and to hold her own. Ahsoka looked up again only to see the Human smiling famously, the dark maroon even visible in the night. “Let’s go find this Lady Bo-Katan on Mandalore before it’s too late. You said you pulled out your clones... Maybe she’ll be able to find us a place to set up shop,” Trace suggested, trying to form a plan in her lover’s stead.

“It’ll be dangerous... I...”

“Then we’ll go together,” Trace interjected before any protest. “I’m not letting you go alone, you don’t have to be alone...”


End file.
